A Photo Every Hour - Saturday 18th February 2023

Saturday 18th was February's photo an hour date. It was the last weekend before my kidney surgery operation, which took place on Monday 20th. The consultants said it's always a good idea to increase your fitness level before surgery so we decided to pop over to a local town (Frome) and take a wander, finding some geocaches and playgrounds. It was also market day in town so we managed to pick up some yummy chocolate brownies from one of the stalls. 

Here's what the day looked like...

13 lovely others joined in:

Valerie joined in on Instagram

Sarah joined in on Instagram

Naomi joined in on Instagram

Josie joined in on Instagram

Jane joined in on Instagram Stories

Denise joined in on Instagram Stories

Rebecca joined in on Instagram Stories

Lucy joined in on Instagram Stories

Alex joined in on Instagram Stories

Bev from Confuzzledom joined in on Instagram

Christine from Christine Lucas joined in on Instagram

Susie from Second Hand Susie joined in on Instagram

Jennifer from Pastry and Purls joined in on Instagram Stories

And myself on Instagram and on this blog post :-) 

March's photo an hour date is Saturday 18th - see you there!

 

 

  

 

June at the Duckpond

Many many years ago I used to do a "weekend at the duckpond" round-up on Mondays. I think Jane from Is That You Darling (who was one of the first bloggers I followed) used to do a 'Mondaying' post and I liked the idea of that so did my own version. 

There's absolutely no way I can keep up with doing a weekly round-up nowdays (to be honest, I'm not sure how I managed to keep it up all those years ago) but I might attempt a sort of monthly round-up instead. Sometimes I feel like there's things I'm quite happy writing about, you know, books I've read, places we've been, good recipes, etc but none of them really are quite "big" enough to warrant a blog post all to themself. So I suppose a monthly post is a way of collecting up all those little things that make life interesting but aren't really significant in any way. Well whatever, let's see how many months I keep it up for. 

So yep, how was our June?

• Photo an hour took place on Saturday 12th - we spent most of the day doing a bit of gardening and a bit of sewing before collecting our supermarket order in the evening. There's a round-up here - http://duck-in-a-dress.blogspot.com/2021/06/a-photo-every-hour-saturday-12th-june.html - and July's date is Saturday 17th. Feel free to join in if you fancy :-)

• We had a lovely swim in Mendip Farm Pool, a privately-owned pool local to us that lets households or bubbles rent the pool all to themselves for an hour. Going swimming is something I miss about the pre-COVID life; I used to swim lengths while Lily was having her swimming lessons and also do aqua aerobics. I mean, I miss it but I don't miss it enough to willingly swim with 20 or so other people (all maskless) in a poorly vetilated room. 

• We bought a load of cheap plants from a couple of garden centres and B&Q back at the end of April and they all seem to be growing quite well.

• It's been a strange month of two halves - sunny at the beginning with the paddling pool out and ice lollies in the garden. Wet at the end with temperatures getting cold again. I imagine the mixture of hot and wet weather had helped the plants! 

• It's been very strange without Glastonbury for the second year in a row. I usually work in Pilton village and get a staff pass to enter. Children of staff are also allowed in free of charge (up to the age of 12) and when Lily was born I thought it'll be great that she'll grow up going to the festival each year. As it is, she's only been to 3 so far - 2016 at 4 months old, 2017 at almost 1 and half years and 2019 at almost 3 and half. 2018 was a fallow year and obviously we all know what's happened to this year and the last. If we assume it does go ahead next year, she'll be 6 and half and halfway to the age where she's not allowed in with me. 

• Andrew's had his second COVID jab, my second one is in a week. He's had AZ and me being a few years younger (under 40) had Pfizer. Between both our families we've had a mixture of the two and Andrew refers to the ones of us who've had Pfizer as "the chosen ones"...

• My 'Shows I've Seen' Twitter thread came to an end. I started it on 7th June 2020 and finished it a few week ago. Now I need a new project for Twitter! 

• Some bits of sewing I've completed over the last few weeks - a skirt for me, a tshirt for Lily and Paw Patrol-themed dress for Lily. Don't look too closely at the seams but they're wearable and she seems to like them :-)

• Good books I've read - A Beautiful Spy by Rachel Hore (all about a woman who becomes a spy in the late 1920's/early 1930's - also based on a true story), Becoming by Michelle Obama (a really interesting look at her early life and time in the White House) and Failures of State: The Inside Battle with Britain's Coronavirus by Jonathan Calvert (both fascinating and horrifying to read).

• My favourite theatre company decided they were going to close. Which is incredibly sad but also understandable (the guy who founded it was 70 last year and decided to step down as artistic director earlier this year). This article in the Guardian is really good - https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2021/jun/16/running-away-with-the-circus-thrills-shocks-genius-kneehigh - and sums up the company I think. 

• Good TV we watched recently - Feel Good on Netflix and Bristol Old Vic's 'Touching the Void' theatre show (they streamed it both as a live performance and also on demand). Andrew's watching The Big Bang Theory from the start - the characters in it are very much like some people he works with! I'm also watching the Great British Sewing Bee on iPlayer; I'm only up to week 4 so far although I already know who won from Twitter. 

• We managed to see the partial eclipse the other week using Andrew's welding mask. Amazingly the clouds actually parted long enough to get a good shot!

• We have several tickets for shows in the autumn which were rearranged from 2020 but I also booked tickets for a new show - Wise Children's 'Wuthering Heights' at the Bristol Old Vic in October. It did feel a bit weird booking them but they're obviously not going to run the show if it's not safe so either it'll be okay to attend or the show will be postponed. 

• We're looking forward to our summer holiday to Scotland and hoping it doesn't get cancelled and it's okay to go! Our holiday style is 'road trip', 'car picnics' and 'sightseeing by driving' so we're not really planning on mixing with other people anyway. 

• We had a nice walk around a nature reserve near Bristol - Golden Valley Nature Reserve. I've been using ViewRanger to find walks and also creating my own on there. My Golden Valley walk is here. 

• Back in January I decided to listen to every song on my 'liked songs' playlist on Spotify. You know how you add a whole album when actually it's only one or two songs you like? And then never get round to removing the ones you don't like? Yep, well I thought if I listened to every single song then I can remove all the ones I didn't need. There's almost 2200 songs on my 'liked songs' list and I'm up to 'R' at the moment. The idea is that when I've done the whole list then every time I press 'shuffle' I will only ever get good songs I enjoy. 

• We ordered a some food gift boxes for Father's Day for the various dads - all were very good so I'm told! We used Georgie Porgie's Puddings, Warren's Bakery and Made Marion Gluten Free.

• And lastly, Lily took part in her very first exam - LAMDA Solo Introductory Stage 1 - where she had to recite a poem, talk about how to play a game and talk about her favourite toy (a dinosaur, obvs). She came out of the exam saying it was lovely! 

How was your June?

 

Our Easter Holiday at Home

I don't really like the word 'staycation'. According to Merriam-Webster the word dates back to the 1940's but I'm sure it always used to mean a holiday spent at home. Nowdays it seems like far too many people, the media, politicians, etc use it as a catch-all for simply having a holiday in the UK. Even the various dictionaries online, Oxford, Cambridge, Collins, all have one definition as holidaying in your own country. Surely if you're leaving your home to go on holiday, regardless of the destination, whether it's Greece or Grimsby, it's still *an actual holiday*. Not a staycation. I don't know, perhaps I'm just remembering wrong. 

Anyway we actually did have a traditional 'staycation' over the Easter holidays - or a 'holiday at home' which I think is a much nicer phrase. 

Normally we'd be in Wales over Easter at a place we've visited every year since 1987. I was only 4 when we first went and the owners of the site we stay at have seen me and my brother grow up, right through to the next generation - Lily- coming along on holiday too. We stay in 2 holiday cottages now though rather than share one with my parents. 

Last year it just felt a bit strange staying home. We weren't yet a month into the first lockdown and we had great weather so just played outside and rebuilt the garden and veg patch. This year for Easter, with the 'stay at home' restrictions lifted, we were able to have some day trips. And although the guidance says 'minimise travel' there's nothing in England's COVID legislation restricting (domestic) travel so we were free to travel wherever we liked for whatever reason, provided we didn't break the 'gathering' bit of the legislation (as an aside, if you're on Twitter, Adam Wagner is an excellent person to follow, he's a human rights barrister who's been keeping track of the changes to COVID legislation since March 2020 (I think over 70 changes so far). He's also brilliant at answering people's questions about law and guidance and explains things in a really easy-to-understand way).

For our holiday at home, we ended up with rather good weather for the whole week really, a bit cold perhaps but at least it wasn't raining. 

We did day trips to:

- Clevedon and Portishead, doing a 2.5 mile walk around the woods in Portishead finishing off with a playground, ice cream and fish & chips.

- the New Forest to see the ponies and tall trees and Southampton to see the huge cruise ships (of course we found a playground there too).

- Teignmouth to meet Andrew's sister, doing a 2.5 mile history walk around the town centre and harbour. We had ice cream, strolled along the prom, visited the playground and had fish & chips for dinner. 

And took picnics:

- to Chew Valley Lake to see the ducks and buy an ice cream. 

- on a 5 mile walk around the local area, crossing fields, going through woods and finding secret footpaths. 

- to Westbury White Horse to see the grandparents where we had ice cream, found geocaches and did a 3.5 mile walk around the hill fort. 

- to Burnham on Sea beach for sandcastle-building and more chips!

- on a 4 mile walk around the local area, following the old railway lines around the area. 

We also had a family Easter lunch outside in the sun complete with Easter egg hunt and a (rather chilly) picnic in the garden later in the week. 

I've written on here before about geocaching (back in 2017); it's quite an interesting and fun thing to do, especially when you're out and about in different places. We found quite a few geocaches while we were out on our day trips. 

I also found an app called ViewRanger which lets you plan walks and see walks other people have created. I'm sure it's one everyone already knows about and I'm late to the party but still, it's quite good. I think the app's possibly going to be retired at some point in the future but it seems to work well at the moment. We used some trails other people had created and also made some of our own. The trail we did in Teignmouth was rather good as it was created by the Royal Geographical Society and had lots of information about the history of the town that you could read or listen to as you followed the route. Anyway, it's an app I'd recommend. 

What did you get up to at Easter? 

 

 

#BEDM Day 12 - Walk to Work Week

Day 12 of Rosalilium’s 'Blog Every Day in May' Challenge

Walking to work is a bit difficult for me really, as my workplace is about 12 miles from my home.

I'm quite fortunate in where I work though, as it's a lovely University to stroll round - we have a lake, ducks and lots of footpaths criss-crossing the campus grounds.

Lunchtime today, I went and explored one little corner of my workplace that in 3 years of being employed there, I've never actually visited...

As well as all the usual footpaths, we have a 'Woodland Walk' area - at this time of year, it's complete with all sorts of flowers (although to be honest, bluebells were about the only one I recognised).


How about you? What's your workplace or walk to work like?

#BEDM Day 8 - Local History Month

Day 8 of Rosalilium’s 'Blog Every Day in May' Challenge

This is going to be a bit of a cheating blog post as the local history tale I'm going to share with you is actually from a place about 3 miles away.

Just down the road, the pretty little village of Kilmersdon is home to several things - a lovely village hall (we had Andrew's 30th birthday party there), a proper local pub (with a landlord who grew up with my in-laws and seems to know every person who walks through the door) and a very very very steep hill.

Remember this little ditty from your childhood?

Jack and Jill went up the hill,
To fetch a pail of water,
Jack fell down and broke his crown,
And Jill came tumbling after

 


Well Kilmersdon is reputed to be the home of Jack and Jill; the well where they went to get said pail of water is firmly at the top of the hill (although I'm pretty sure it's a replica) and I can vouch for it being one long climb to the top. If you fell and tripped, you certainly wouldn't stop!

What's less well-known outside of the local area though, is the real story behind the seemingly-innocent rhyme...

Jack and Jill went up the hill,
To fetch a pail of water,
Jill came down with half a crown,
But t'weren't for fetching water!


The legend continues with the fact that one of the most common surnames in the local area is Gilson (ie. Jill's son) - highly unusual seeing as most babies were given the father's surname.

A sweet tale of two children and their water pail?
Or something a bit darker with long-lasting consequences?

What do you think?

Autumnal Pleasure at Sydney Gardens

We had a couple of hours to spare before we watched Paloma Faith the other week and Andrew decided to take me to a place I've never actually visited before.

 

Now I've lived within 10 miles of Bath for about 28 years but I've never walked round Sydney Gardens.
It's a beautiful small park on the north-eastern side of Bath, originally named the Bath Vauxhall Gardens and the only remaining eighteenth-century pleasure gardens in the country.

The gardens were landscaped and opened in 1795 but the coming of the steam rail age and canal network cut through the park when the Great Western Railway and Kennet and Avon Canal arrived in town. 

 

Walking round the park, it seemed like Autumn really was just around the corner.
 

Under the arches next to the canal, how cool is this? Ancient graffiti!

 

 I wonder if any of them had any idea their handiwork would still be around over 200 years later?
 

The Camel Trail - Padstow to Wadebridge

Another walk we did whilst in Cornwall was a 5 mile stretch of The Camel Trail from Padstow to Wadebridge, following the route of the old disused railway line running parallel with the Camel Estuary.

I appreciate I've featured several walks recently on the blog, so please, do let me know if you're thinking "oh no, not another load of pictures from a walk"
Believe me, they won't feature that often as I'm not actually a huge fan of long strenuous walks!
But anyway, back to the route in hand...

 The start of the trail just outside Padstow

 A view over towards Padstow Bay

 Refreshements halfway along the trail provided by the lovely Dougal from Treats on Trikes!

Can you tell it was a railway line...?